Install Plasma Active on ARM Systems

External MultiMediaCard (MMC) Images

Mer Plasma Active

The Mer project creates a Plasma Active MMC Image which is build for the armv7hl target devices like the ARM Tegra 2 tablet. For more details please see the related Mer Wiki.

You can also download the kernel boot image, the external MMC image and some additional helper scripts from basysKom download location here.

Deploying a Plasma Active (MMC) raw Image to a MultiMediaCard

A Installation description for MultiMediaCards could be found in the MeeGo ARM Wiki.

Install Plasma Active on x86 Systems

Live Images

These can be used as testing base and to track progress.

Balsam Professional

open-slx creates regularly updated packages of Balsam Professional for Plasma Active. You can try the Live ISO from a USB stick. Download the Balsam Professional live image, which is based on openSUSE here (use the highest version numbered iso file).

MeeGo Plasma Active

This image is an adaption of the public meego-tablet-ia32-pinetrail variant and it is bootable on x86 based devices like WeTab, ExoPC or the Idea Pad. Login Data: User meego passwd meego; User root passwd meego

The scope of Plasma Active Contour UX development is for usage on tablet devices. If you want to activate the mouse cursor eg on a netbook, start "System Settings" application and select under "Workspace Appearance/Cursor Theme" a non-empty theme.

Deploying a Plasma Active ISO Image to a Flashdrive

After you have downloaded the ISO image it's a good idea to validate the image against transmission errors.
A checksum file should be available for every image.

Validate and Deploy on Linux

On Linux you can compare the hash between the image and related checksum file using the following command (with both the image and the checksum file in the same directory):

user@host# sha1sum -c <checksum file>

user@host# md5sum -c <checksum file>

If the command retuns "<image name>: FAILED", please download the image one more time and check again.

After validation feel free to deploy the image to an not mounted USB flashdrive. In the following example we use the
tool 'dd' for this:

root@host# dd if=<image file> of=/dev/<USB flashdrive> bs=1M

Please note, the usage of this tool is potentially dangerous! In case of a mistaken output device, all data on it will be irrecoverably lost.

To get the correct output device for this tool, please follow the steps below:

5. In this example the correct dd parameter is sdb in the position of <USB flashdrive>.

Running Plasma Active in a Virtual Machine

When running Plasma Active in a virtual machine, consider that performance will not be as good as when it runs natively on the devices it has been designed for. For testing, we strongly recommend running Plasma Active on a device. The following limitations need consideration when using a virtual machine instead of a real device:

Advanced visual effects might not be available or work correctly in the virtual machine. This can lead to degradation of certain features, performance, visual effects and possibly stability

User interfaces designed for touch-screens often work less efficiently for mouse and keyboard based input methods, or feel less natural.

We have found VirtualBox to basically work, albeit in some cases the above problems have been noted. Read on for instructions on how to have a first look at Plasma Active, even without suitable hardware.

Virtual Box

Before you can start the image via VirtualBox, please configure the virtual device
as below.

Please note, only live images since 2011-07-20-10-50-meego-plasma-contour-in-progress-USB-live.iso are runnable via VirtualBox.

Please note, if you'd like to install our live image to an VirtualBox hard drive,
you have to remove the live image from the virtual CD/DVD-ROM after installation.
This will be done after Power off the machine via VirtualBox OSE Manager.

Booting the Live Image on a WeTab/ExoPC

3. Press the power (top left underside) + softtouch (top left upperside) buttons until it reboots.

4. Choose in the boot menu via the softtouch button the installation or live mode
(short tab to switch entry, long tab to choose).

Installation on Balsam Professional or openSUSE

In order to install the latest development snapshots on Balsam Professional or openSUSE 11.4, you have to add two repositories to your system. These update kdelibs and kde-runtime to a patched 4.7 which contains additions in QML bindings and improvements needed to run the development version for Plasma Active. If you would like to try it in a virtual machine, we recommend Virtualbox, which provides accelerated graphics capable of "desktop effects" (see above).

Important: this procedure will upgrade your KDE installation to a patched version of 4.7, replacing any KDE packages you have installed. Some versions of these packages, for example kdepim4 and kdepim4-runtime, are built for a mobile target and the desktop versions of their apps will not run properly. Running a newer version of KDE may update users' configuration files in a way that is not backward-compatible with previous versions of the applications, so it is advised to use a development installation or backup your KDE configuration. If you don't know how to do this, stay with the Live image.

Installation Recipe

Preparation

As you are going to install packages from a different source, or so-called "vendor", you can make your life easier by telling zypper to automatically resolve packages across vendors. In /etc/zypp/zypp.conf, change the following line

solver.allowVendorChange = false

to

solver.allowVendorChange = true

Due to a bug in the DVD installation, you may be using static network configuration using YaST instead of NetworkManager. To change it to use NetworkManager, launch YAST, select "Network Settings" and under "Global Options" change the setting to "User Controlled with NetworkManager". You can then enable wireless and configure it as normal. (Note: this seems to be fixed with the OpenSUSE 12.1 DVD, at least the 64-bit version.)

Package Installation

Update all packages to the latest versions, trust the keys for the repos. NOTE: if you have other additional repositories than these registered in your system, YOU are responsible for making sure they are compatible.

zypper dist-upgrade

For some reason GRUB isn't always updated to make the new kernel the default when installing this new kernel, so check in YAST, System, Boot Loader

Finally, install the Plasma Active specific packages:

zypper install plasma-contour-config

This will install and setup the Plasma Active shell, which is contained in the plasma-mobile package (plasma-mobile has different sets of QML user interfaces per UI profile). zypper will ask you to accept the key. It will also suggests vendor changes for some packages. Accept these options.

Running Plasma Active

If you have installed the plasma-tablet-config package, your system will automatically start into Plasma Active. Just make sure you have autologin enabled in Yast and restart your system.

By default in openSUSE, Nepomuk is not enabled. Contour uses Nepomuk so you should enable it and Strigi in System Settings->Desktop Search. You will also probably want modify the profiles in the Power section to set the device to go to sleep when the button on the back is pressed.

From a full Plasma Desktop (or Netbook) user experience, you can also switch at runtime to Plasma Active as follows (as user logged into the the X11 session):

# Quit your plasma session
kquitapp plasma-desktop
or
kquitapp plasma-netbook
# Start Plasma Active
plasma-device
# It is also possible to run Plasma Active in a window,
# this is useful for testing purposes:
plasma-device --nodesktop

Installation of Plasma Active from sources

While the recommended way to test Plasma Active is with the above recipe using the binary packages, it is possible to build Plasma Active from the source repository, who wants to try the bleeding edge repository can build plasma-mobile from sources.
The recommended way is to follow the usual kde from sources build instructions. It is also possible to use the binary kde packages as a base.

It is necessary to install some packages (and their dependencies) to have a working development environment:
sudo zypper install gcc gcc-c++ git cmake, kdelibs-devel

and add the text plasma text to the uxlist property in the General section.

Known Issues

The Meego tablet UX installs a number of files in /etc/xdg/autostart that are also executed when running Plasma Active, resulting in elements of the Meego tablet UX showing up nevertheless. Workaround is to rename/remove that folder.

Installing Additional Software

There are a few KDE projects that have created touch friendly versions of their applications already. These versions are included in the MeeGo repository. Currently, these are:

Calligra Active - Install package calligra-active

Kontact Touch - Install package kontact-touch

In addition, some applications already work quite well together with Active. The following is a list of applications that work ok on a touchscreen: